Queen Takes Pawn
by Erinya
Summary: ...'Check,' he murmurs. 'Your move, my dear.' My take on Ajedrez and Sands' first meeting. Complete.


**Warnings**: Language, twisted sexuality, power games, and violence.  
**Disclaimer**: Sands and Ajedrez are the product of Robert Rodriguez's depraved little mind, not mine. (Which does not mean, however, that I am not depraved.)  
**Summary**: For **smtfhw** who requested Mexico fic of my choice. My take on Ajedrez and Sands' first meeting. Funky backwards tenses are intentional, for certain values of intentional.

**Queen Takes Pawn**

He'd met her in a bar.

No, not even a bar. A bona-fide ten-dollar-blow Mexican strip joint and sluttery. He'd had a bad day--well, what he'd counted as a bad day then; he figures now that any day he still had eyes had been a fucking good day. But he hadn't known that then. Then, he'd been all out of sorts because his shapes hadn't fallen in quite the right pattern. A local official had refused to be corrupted and he'd had to shoot him. Not that he'd minded the shooting. But it was messy. He'd gotten blood on his favorite T-shirt.

So he'd slumped low in his seat in a corner of the filthy dive, nursing his tequila and eying the flesh for sale at best offer amply displayed before him, and contemplated all the ways he could screw The Company for stranding him out here in the shitty end of buttfuck nowhere so-called Culiacan to play spy with the express goal of ensuring that neither side ever won the game. Without getting screwed himself six ways from Sunday.

She'd slipped into the seat across from him, materializing out of the smoke and stink and dully flashing strobe-lights like some Aztec goddess of misrule, and flashed him the brilliant smile he'd later come to know as challenge, come-on, and harbinger of danger.

"Hey, cowboy," she said, in English, and jerked her head at the undulating bodies. "See anything you like?"

Sands, tapping ash from his cigarette deliberately, saw her ironic eyebrow and raised her one. "I do now. So what's the going rate?"

Her smile sweetened. "More than you can afford."

"I wouldn't say that," Sands drawled. "I've got a Company credit card burning a hole in my pocket, darlin'. I'll match any offer you can make."

"Of course you will, baby." Her voice was teasing, silky and deep. "Too bad for you, isn't it, that I am not a whore."

"No?" He let his gaze stray lazily down her body, then back up to her mouth, and finally, as an afterthought, to her mocking eyes. "You can hardly blame me for the error in judgment. Given the venue."

"True enough," she said. "But I'm not selling what you're buying."

"Everyone has their price, sweet-cheeks."

Her mouth tightened a fraction, her eyes darkening before she seemed to remember herself; then the anger or disgust he'd glimpsed was gone as if it had never been. "Perhaps," she said softly. "So what is yours?"

"Depends on who's asking." He waved the waitress over, aiming his most winning smile at his new companion. "Buy you a drink?"

She inclined her head; her expression revealed nothing. "Why not," she said, and ordered Hornitos with lime.

As if she wasn't his type already. "Sands," he said, stretching out a hand; after a moment, she took it, favoring him with a long, cool, assessing look.

"Ajedrez," she answered, as if the exchange secretly amused her.

When her tequila came, he watched her tip her head back to drain the shot, noting the slim, graceful lines of her neck, the movement of her throat as she swallowed, aware of his growing erection. "So what _are_ you selling, Ajedrez?"

She set down the glass, that wary, watchful look returning; and beneath it, steel, cold and sharp. "Information." She leaned towards him; he could smell her perfume, jasmine and a hint of musk. "And I'm not selling. I'm buying."

"And what makes you think I have information to sell?"

"Call it a hunch." She rose; now it was she who offered her hand, and he who paused before he took it. "Let's get out of here," she said, and led him through the crowd and out into the night.

* * *

He remembers that night like it was yesterday. Sees the scene play out before his non-existent eyes...

She pulls him into the dark and narrow alleyway between the two buildings, shoving him against the wall and kissing him with such ferocity that he tastes blood and doesn't know if it is from her lip or his own, copper and salt mingling with her flavor of hot cinnamon and tequila and darkness and he's so hard he can barely see or think or stand to wait.

Until a ring of cold metal, the unmistakable business end of a semi-automatic pistol, bites painfully into his skin under his jawline.

"I know what you are, Agent Sands," says Ajedrez. "No, don't move. What are you doing in my country?"

"Serving freedom. Spreading democracy. Keeping the balance. The usual."

She frowns, the gun jerking against his throat, digging deeper. "No bullshit."

"I do what they tell me to." Mostly. According to his own interpretation.

"Keeping the cartels and the government at each other's throats? Supporting whatever side serves your purposes for the moment? Making sure the right people die at the right time?"

He laughs shortly. "Sounds like you already know all the answers."

"You Americans are all the same." Her voice vibrates with contempt. "You think you know what's best for us."

"You really think we give a fuck what's best for you or your country, little girl?" Holding her gaze, he lets his hand drift down to his belt. "How naive of you." His gun is almost within reach. Just one inch more--

She notices. "I'll blow your head off," she says sweetly.

"Promises, promises."

"Hands up."

He complies. He's still hard as fuck, and she knows it; she smiles. He's not sure that he likes that smile, but his dick sure does. Likes everything about her, including the fact that she's got him at gunpoint. "How do you know about my operation?"

"You're not the only one with contacts." Her smile widens. "In fact, you're not the only one paying your contacts."

Shit. Well, it can't be helped. "What are you? Police? AFN?"

"Does it matter?" she says, voice harshening. "I belong here. You don't." The pistol presses insistently against his pulse. "Start talking."

"I thought you wanted to buy information, not take it by force."

"So I lied," she says. "Besides, why pay for what you can take for free?"

"Why indeed?" He smiles back at her. "What did you want to know?"

"What is your interest in the Barillo cartel?"

"Barillo is the richest and most powerful man in Sinaloa," he says, with a patient sigh. "Power and money interest me, Ajedrez. Don't they interest you?"

"My agency wishes to take down the cartel," she says after a moment; there's an odd note in her voice, one that Sands, with all his prided skill in reading people, cannot interpret.

She's AFN, then. "How nice for you."

"Do you intend to interfere with our operation?"

"Only if it gets in my way."

"And if it does?"

"I'll have your dirty little agency stopped in their tracks," he says. "Thus the advantage of having friends in high places. And low places, too, of course. In any case, they're just a phone call and a few thousand pesos away."

She considers this briefly, eyes narrowed. "I don't believe you," she snaps, finally.

"Smart girl," he mutters, and winks at her. "One good lie deserves another. The truth doesn't come free, sugarbutt."

She snarls suddenly, and draws back the gun; the swift impact of the barrel on his cheekbone echoes like a real shot through his skull. Her mistake. He is on her instantly, pushing her forward and pinning her against the wall, one hand at the base of her neck, his own pistol at her temple.

"I like you, Ajedrez," he says mildly. "I like you very much indeed. In fact, I think you might have a great future ahead of you." He leans in close, breathing in the scent of her. Jasmine, fear...and arousal. It's a heady combination. "Working with me and my agency, that is."

"Fuck you," she spits at him over her shoulder. Her left cheek is pressed to the dirty brick, and he knows he must be hurting her, but she makes no sign of pain other than a barely detectable quiver of tension in her body.

"I hope so." He sets his mouth to her neck below her ear; she shudders at the touch, with disgust or desire he cannot tell, and does it matter? "As I said. I like you," he says against her skin. "I would rather not have to shoot you. It would be so wasteful, wouldn't you agree?"

"You're a pig."

"So rude for such a pretty lady," Sands purrs. "So I'm a pig. But I like to think I'm a reasonable pig." He kicks at her gun; it clatters across the alleyway. Her body jerks at the sound, but he holds her fast. "Check," he murmurs. "Your move, my dear." And feels her soften into him, resistance melting into yielding need, surrender, submission, a hundred fantasies under his lips and hands.

She takes him back to her hotel, where they fuck each other senseless and later lie together, bruised and bleeding and sated, and talk of how much they despise their respective agencies and how their talents are so very wasted there. How she never gets the missions she wants because she is a woman, how he's been sent to Mexico as punishment for being too good at what he does. How the balance should be swung their way.

He thinks he's won. He never sees it coming. Not even when she bends over him, smiling, thick dark hair falling in a tangled curtain that conceals her eyes, naked breasts brushing his chest, and whispers,

"_Checkmate._"


End file.
